A glimpse of the future

The exceptional houses of tomorrow are already being built today, thanks to Paragraph 79

- James Fisher

IT’S a pretty good job,’ says Richard Hawkes. ‘I get to go to work every day and design exceptional buildings. It’s not a bad way to wake up.’ Mr Hawkes is the director of Hawkes Architects, a practice that specialises in designing buildings that comply with paragraph 79 of the National Planning Policy Framework, or Para 79 for short. You will have seen these houses if, as I was, you were self-isolating to Grand Designs before it was cool. Indeed, you may have seen Mr Hawkes on the very same show.

Para 79 began life back in 1997 as Planning Policy Guidance 7 (PPG7) and was introduced by then Environment Secretary John Gummer (now Lord Deben). In its original form, the guidance stated that: ‘An isolated new house in the countryside may also exceptionally be justified if it is clearly of the highest quality, is truly outstanding in terms of its architecture and landscape design, and would significantly enhance its immediate setting and wider surroundings’ and ‘This means that each generation would have the opportunity to add to the tradition of the Country House which has done so much to enhance the English countryside.’

As years and governments have passed, PPG7 slowly transformed into Para 79, but the initial framework still stands. The current legislation states that a house given Para 79 planning permission must be ‘of exceptional quality, in that it is truly outstanding or innovative, reflecting the highest standards in architecture, and would help to raise standards of design more generally in rural areas’. Perhaps most importantly, however, the building must ‘significantly enhance its immediate setting, and be sensitive to the defining characteristics of the local area’.